Changing the terms of economic and policy debates: the

importance of collecting and archiving time use surveys in the

promotion of gender justiceKimberly Fisher

Centre for Time Use ResearchDepartment of Sociology, University of Oxford

125 years of time use surveys

• Many large scale time-use surveys 1930s-1960s (Mass Observation in UK, USDA farm surveys, BBC & NHK surveys, Szalai multinational project) – but these obscure– lack of tools to analyse data (until recently)– challenged economic blind spots– association with unfashionable progressive

research

Economic blind spots• Economic policy as developed in the 20th

century assumed– Complete separation of domestic & public spheres

– things in the domestic sphere have no policy relevance

– Things of importance to policy makers have unambiguous financial value which over-rides other associated value

– We only need to measure financial value to understand societies

Radical challenge of time use

• Basic assumptions from early applications of large-scale time use studies 1900-1940s– To understand behaviour, you must consider

activity patterns in total – the focus on isolated elements distorts and obscures the picture

– All activities are important research subjects– Domestic activity which had been ignored

made visible & part of political agendas

Wider implications for gender research

• Significance of measuring unpaid work well-covered in this conference, but other gender issues arising in current developments in time use research– Methodology collects gendered information people

do not recognise consciously– Gender dimensions of national well-being accounts– Gender dimensions of environmental research– Rethinking work-life balance

Collecting information people do not recognise consciously

• Valuing care activities and unmasking the time commitments care requires which carers themselves do not recognise– Can help identify need for services and support to

protect the well-being of older women carers – with Michael Bittman, Trish Hill, & Cathy Thomson

• GPS tracking methods picking up gendered dimensions of movement people do not notice

Movement & synchronicity as measures of integration

• Whether people with disabilities access a range of public spaces

• Whether ethnic or religious minorities, single mothers, older people, immigrants, Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transexual make the same use of social spaces, services, shared leisure time

National well-being accounts

• Subjective wellbeing (SWB) increasingly recognised as an alternative indicator of personal and societal progress (as opposed to GDP and other financial and resource-based measures - Stiglitz Commission agenda)

• SWB retains the social elements of society rather than reducing societies to commodities and consumption (Easterlin paradox)

National well-being accounts

• Distinction between ‘life-domain/generalised’ vs ‘emotional/hedonic’ wellbeing• How happy/satisfied are you with your life

in general? (Easterlin, Oswald, Helliwell)• How much time do you spend doing

enjoyable activities? (Kahneman & Kruegar, Juster & Stafford, Robinson, Gershuny)

National well-being accounts

• Cross-national comparability problems• Lose link between policy impacts on daily routines

& association between routines & emotions– Behaviours (& associated emotional responses) occur in

bounded cycles rather than sequences of isolated units– Policy interventions have knock-on consequences– Cannot know if emotional change correlated with

policy-influenced behaviour change reflects the policy or knock-on consequences

Gender in national well-being accounts

• Gender consequences of high importance in national well-being accounts – the experience of all activities - including those performed largely by women – matter in national rankings and assessment of progress

• Highlights gender consequences of policy changes and regularises gender concerns

Gender & environmental impact of daily behaviours (research with Roujman

Shabazian & Mohammad Sepahvand)

• While more women in state-level politics is associated with higher-levels of environmental policies in the USA

• More women in managerial roles and professional jobs is associated with lower-levels of environmental legislation

% of elected state officials who are women 1.626 **

% managers/professionals who are women -1.508 *

Gender & environmental impact of daily behaviours

• Diary data offer an essential element in the mix of research monitoring human impact on the planet as reveal how people change total behaviours, not merely considering individual behaviours in isolation

• Diary data also reveal complexities between care for people and care for the planet – the gender & environmental inclination links are complex

Gender & environmental impact of daily behaviours

• Changing behaviours to reduce impacts on the planet also has potential to change power dynamics between groups in societies, and diaries offer one significant tool to measure the gender dimensions of such shifts

Time diaries matter in gender research

• Time diaries collect comprehensive pictures of human behaviour, fill in gaps ignored by conventional economics – particularly those blind spots that have led to invisibility of gender in public policy

• Collect gendered aspects of behaviour that people do not register consciously

• Reveal many dimensions of social change for women and men

Diaries matter in gender research

• Change in gender relations slow – data have long useful life

• Older datasets obscure and difficult to access – but they are there – we have the historical time series to make significant investigations if we restore and use these resources

• Essential to archive and preserve access to time use data to monitor and understand changing gender relations

Time Archives Introduction

• Centre for Time Use Research• University of Oxford, UK

• http://www.timeuse.org/